DVD Reviews:  Brides of Christ

For a five and a half hour long DVD set, Brides of Christ is very entertaining though I would suggest not running them consecutively.  The show follows two young women and the people they come into contact with the two girls have been accepted into the church and have begun to train as nuns.   The show is contained of six sections each concentrating on each woman throughout the story, Diane, Frances, Ambrose, Rosemary, Paul and Catherine. 

Diane and her Vanessa are really the main characters throughout; they become the best of friends through their involvement with the church and when their friendship escalates, and Diane’s ideas that she writes in the her diary are read by Vanessa and she takes them seriously and a little too literal, they both get in trouble, and Diane is forced to do away with her most prized possession, her diary. 

The girls in the convent learn all about age old traditions, rites and when they question the philosophy behind the teachings the high ranked sisters consider it as disregard for the teachings, when in actual fact the girls are just stimulating healthy conversation about the religion to help them understand better.  The story all takes place during the second world war and with change on the way the sisters are having a lot of trouble adapting and because they are bound by their vows they must try to believe and follow the old teachings while still taking on board all the new changes that are being introduced.  The girls have now graduated the nunnery and they are thankfully assigned to the same school for catholic Girls, their lives there become a part of the young girls of which they teach in that not only are the sisters their teachers but their friends as well.   

“Brides of Christ” premiered on Television in 1991 to exciting reviews and solid numbers for the ABC. It has built up a standing as one of the country’s pinnacle moments in mini-series television, not only for its script and prevailing story line, but as an early vehicle for more a star on the rise. Among them a young Russell Crowe, an even younger but no less endowed Naomi Watts, and another who would go far in both TV and film, Lisa Hensley. 

The quality of the picture is a little ordinary, and you can at times see grains of God knows what all over the screen, please excuse the pun.  You can also see the background noise in the darker parts of the movie causing the black squares to appearing the blackness.  The sound quality is also very good, there is no need for you to turn the volume all the way up to hear what they are saying only to find that when something other than dialogue comes on it blows your ears off, fantastic job on the sound balance. 

The Extras are absolutely terrible, mainly because there just isn’t any, oh well better luck next time, but I guess after almost six hours of mini-series the last thing your prepared for is extras.  Great job all round.